Huobi, the fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume to date, saw significant progress in its crypto mining business in 2019. Huobi Pool, a cryptocurrency mining arm of Huobi, says its operating revenues surged 547% in 2019, reaching $320 million year-over-year from $53 million in 2018. PoS staking continues to be the Huobi Pool’s most profitable business Originally launched in March 2018, Huobi Pool released its first annual financial report on March 19, announcing the news for Huobi Group’s digital assets mining business and trading pool for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2019. Alongside major growth in operating revenue, …

The Steem (STEEM) community announced its intention to create a new platform in the wake of the controversy with Justin Sun. According to a blog post published on March 18, the new platform, named Hive, will launch on March 20. The new platform will initially be launched as an exact code fork of the Steem blockchain, but it will not directly copy the current blockchain’s state. Steem users will receive their balances through a 1:1 airdrop taken from a snapshot of the blockchain at 10 AM EST on March 20. There is a major caveat, however, as the airdrop will …

Whales appear to be accumulating Ether (ETH), with the percentage of ETH supply controlled by the top 100 wallets standing near 25%. The observation was made by blockchain data analysis firm Santiment, who tweeted that the centralization of ETH among top wallets suggests that whales are accumulating. Santiment argues that the data indicates large investors “have a collective sentiment of the token being undervalued and believe it’s a great mid to long-term hold play.” However, the company cautioned that signs of accumulation do not guarantee parabolic price action in the short term stating, “Sometimes these price rises take a bit …

The Steem blockchain reportedly experienced a troubling episode recently, whereby the blockchain’s entire governance system was disturbed. Tron founder Justin Sun, new owner of the Steemit social network based on the Steem token, appears to have successfully executed a takeover of Steem by leveraging not only tokens directly controlled, but also tokens held on several major exchanges, in order to vote out the previous delegates (Steem uses a delegated proof-of-stake system) and install new ones. This means that customers of these exchanges likely had their funds used without their consent in this blockchain power struggle. While it was an unfortunate …

Blockstack unveiled a novel consensus mechanism for piggyback blockchains called Proof of Transfer (PoX) on Feb. 6. Instead of relying on its own proof of work, miners under PoX commit Bitcoin (BTC), which circulates in the ecosystem. The system will be used in Blockstack’s proposed Stacks 2.0 blockchain, which is set for release later in 2020. The Proof of Transfer mechanism was devised to piggyback on the security of Bitcoin, while allowing complex interactions between stakeholders within the Stacks ecosystem. Cointelegraph spoke with Muneeb Ali, Blockstack’s CEO, to learn more about the proposed mechanism. Not a sidechain There are several …

Coinbase Custody and Bison Trails have joined the ranks of the Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA), a Jan. 30 press release announced. Together with the alliance, they will advocate for the adoption of clear regulations on staking proceeds, as well as other development initiatives. The Proof of Stake Alliance is an advocacy group founded in 2019 and featuring more than 18 members. It engages in regulatory and congressional discussions to promote staking-friendly regulation, as well as organizing events and educational initiatives. As COO at Polychain Capital and POSA board member Matt Perona explained to Cointelegraph, the organization's primary goal is …

Binance.US, the U.S. cryptocurrency trading platform of major crypto exchange Binance, will introduce staking rewards in February. According to an announcement published by Binance.US on Jan. 29, staking rewards will be made available for Algorand (ALGO) and COSMOS (ATOM) starting next month. Staking support for more coins to come Furthermore, the exchange announced plans to add other Proof-of-Stake (PoS) coins later. The announcement explains that an easy way to access staking “allows more people to earn rewards for contributing to the network by promoting network security, reducing validation costs.” Furthermore, Binance.US claims to be the first United States marketplace to …

Financial services and mobile payment company Square thinks it has found a way to turn fiat into crypto in real-time point-of-sale transactions. How it works On Jan. 21, the United States Patent Office awarded Square a patent for a technology that the team argues cracks a present barrier in merchant transactions: “All cryptocurrencies face the same drawback in that they are not widely accepted. Presently, cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin, are not accepted by most retail merchants, or even by most online merchants.” The team cited a number of drawbacks to current crypto spending. Transactions take a while to process. Minor advances …

BitPay, a leading provider of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency payment services, announced on Jan. 21 the launch of XRP payments and cross-border transfers. BitPay has also added support for XRP — the cryptocurrency used by Ripple’s payment network — to the BitPay Wallet app. Although rumors were circulating on Jan. 20 across Twitter and Reddit that BitPay had added support for XRP, the company officially confirmed its work with Ripple’s developer platform Xpring to complete the integration. According to BitPay’s CMO, Bill Zielke, BitPay merchants around the world are now able to accept XRP without any additional integrations required. Zielke said: …

Ethereum’s Serenity will launch by the end of this year, according to ConsenSys Co-founder Andrew Keys. Given the current state of development though, few share his excitement. In a Jan. 7 post published on the ConsenSys site, Andrew Keys shared his predictions for 2020. Keys was one of the co-founders of ConsenSys, having since become a managing partner at DARMA Capital. While Keys’ predictions touched diverse themes ranging from the world economy to human rights, two are especially notable for their optimism. According to the executive, “2020 will see Ethereum move stridently beyond Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0, onto Phase …

A Jan. 8 post published by the Ethereum Foundation (EF) revealed that developers are working on a new implementation of the Vyper compiler, due to “multiple serious bugs” in the existing version. The Vyperlang team responded by noting that existing Vyper smart contracts were not affected by these bugs. Vyper is an alternative programming language for Ethereum originally conceived by Vitalik Buterin. It focuses on being as human-readable as possible, even at the cost of missing some of the more advanced features found in Solidity, the primary language. While initially part of the main Ethereum (ETH) code stack, it has …

It’s already well-theorized that it’s not cryptocurrency or decentralized finance apps, but gaming that will actually drive blockchain use cases in the real world. While this has moved many smaller development companies and hobbyist programmers to release their own blockchain-driven games, distributed ledger technology’s reception among mainstay gaming companies has so far largely been neutral. A new partnership between old players But that’s about to change in the wake of Ubisoft’s partnership with Ultra, a DLT-driven gaming platform that might be fairly described as Steam on the blockchain. Users can earn digital currency, buy games, and resell them. Ubisoft is …